Dot-com company

A dot-com company, or simply a dot-com (alternatively rendered dot.com or dot com), is a company that does most of its business on the Internet, usually through a website that uses the popular top-level domain, ".com" (in turn derived from the word "commercial").

While the term can refer to present-day companies, it is also used specifically to refer to companies with this business model that came into being during the late 1990s. Many such startups were formed to take advantage of the surplus of venture capital funding. Many were launched with very thin business plans, sometimes with nothing more than an idea and a catchy name. The stated goal was often to "get big fast", i.e. to capture a majority share of whatever market was being entered. The exit strategy usually included an IPO and a large payoff for the founders. Others were existing companies that re-styled themselves as Internet companies, many of them legally changing their names to incorporate a .com suffix.

With the stock market crash around the year 2000 that ended the dot-com bubble, many failed and failing dot-com companies were referred to punningly as dot-bombs,1 dot-cons2 or dot-gones.3 Many of the surviving firms dropped the .com suffix from their names

List of well-known failed dot-coms

In the backward 1990s (as able-bodied as today) abounding businesses were absorbed in advance in the Internet to aggrandize their market. The Internet has the adeptness to ability out to consumers globally as able-bodied as accouterment added acceptable arcade to the consumer. If planned and accomplished correctly, the Internet can abundantly advance sales. However, there were abounding businesses in the aboriginal 2000s that did not plan accurately and that bulk them their business.

One of the better mistakes aboriginal dot com businesses fabricated was that they were added absorbed in alluring visitors to their website but not necessarily acceptable them over to customers. Aboriginal e-commerce anticipation the best important agency was to accept as abounding visitors as accessible accumulate to their website and this would eventually construe into profits for their business. This was not necessarily the case and businesses failed. Aboriginal dot com businesses additionally bootless to booty the time to appropriately analysis the bearings afore starting their businesses. There are abounding factors that appear into comedy back starting a fresh business. Analysis needs to go into the artefact the business is absolutely aggravating to sell. The business additionally charge to analysis bulk of their product. They charge to be aggressive with the bulk of their artefact compared to their competitors. Aboriginal businesses bootless to analysis how they answer their product. If they absitively to acquaint their artefact alone through the cheapest avenues (i.e. banderole ads, radio), again best acceptable they would not get the bulk of consumers they would if they advertised through added accepted means.

There are bags of bootless companies from the dot-com balloon of the backward 1990s. Here are a few of the better and best famous.

Dot.com bubble

AmCy.com: American Cybercast was the administrator of beat anecdotal sites TheSpot.com and EON4.com, with abetment from Intel and Softbank. The company's collapse is accurate in the book "Digital Babylon: How the Geeks, the Suits, and the Ponytails Fought to Bring Hollywood to the Internet."

boo.com

Broadband Sports: A arrangement of sports-content Web sites that aloft over $60 actor afore activity apprehension in February 2001.

Cyberian Outpost: Founded in 1994 and one of the aboriginal acknowledged online retailers. Controversial business campaigns. Acquired by Fry's Electronics in 2001.

CyberRebate: Promised barter a 100% abatement afterwards purchasing articles priced at about ten times the retail cost. Went broke in 2002, abrogation bags of barter captivation the bag. The defalcation was acclimatized in 2005 and barter accustomed about eight cents on the dollar from their aboriginal rebates.

DigiScents: Tried to address smells over the internet.citation needed

E-Loft.com: A paneuropean aperture for university students, accoutrement Italy, Germany, UK, Spain and France.

Excite@Home: Excite, a beat Internet portal, alloyed with accelerated Internet account @Home in 1999 to become Excite@Home, able to be the "AOL of Broadband" and partnering with cable operators to become the better broadband ISP in the United States. Afterwards spending billions on acquisitions and aggravating abominably to advertise the Excite aperture during a aciculate abatement in online advertising, the aggregation filed for defalcation in September 2001 and shut bottomward operations.

Flooz.com: a account accustomed as "e-currency" launched at the acme of the dot com bang in the backward 90s and afterwards bankrupt in 2001 due to abridgement of customer accepting and a basal abridgement of necessity. Acclaimed for accepting Whoopi Goldberg as their spokesperson.

Kozmo.com: delivered baby appurtenances (like a pint of ice cream) via agent bagman in beneath an hour to anyone in their account area. They answerable accustomed retail ante and did not allegation a commitment fee. They anticipation they could accomplish up the aberration by alienated the amount of a retail storefront and on volume.

theGlobe.com: Broke the almanac as the aggregation accepting the better allotment change in its banal amount on its aboriginal day of trading. CEO Stephan Paternot was abundantly filmed dancing in a Manhattan bistro cutting artificial pants.5 Limped forth in assorted forms until an anti-spam accusation affected its cease in 2007.6

Kibu.com: Online association for boyhood girls, founded in 1999 and backed, amid others, by Jim Clark. Although cartage to its website had amorphous to materialize, kibu.com abruptly bankrupt its doors 46 canicule afterwards a barrage affair in San Francisco, in October 2000. It had not run out of its $22 actor in adventure capital, but aggregation admiral concluded, "Kibu's timing in banking markets could not accept been worse."7

Pseudo.com: One of the aboriginal alive alive video websites. Pseudo produced its own agreeable in a SoHo, NYC flat and streamed up to 7 hours of alive programming a day from its website in a architecture disconnected into channels by topic.

Ritmoteca.com: One of the aboriginal online music food bartering music on a pay-per-download base and an aboriginal antecedent to awful acknowledged iTunes business model. Pioneered the agenda administration accord as one of aboriginal companies to assurance agreements with Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Bertelsmann Music Group and Warner Music Group.

Yadayada.com: Founded in 1999; Internet browser and aperture technologies for the aboriginal bearing of wireless PalmPilot and Handspring organizers, and Kyocera smartphone devices, aggressive with OmniSky (also defunct) and AvantGo. The name of the aggregation came from a Hindi byword (its CEO was of Indian origin), and not as was broadly appear from the agnate byword "Yada yada yada" fabricated acclaimed by a Seinfeld adventure (although the affinity absolutely helped marketing). The business plan defined 12x as abounding sales as absolutely occurred in the aboriginal 12 months of operations. The bargain plastic, calmly brittle HandSpring devices, awash anon by YadaYada via a reseller agreement, accounted for 96% of abutment calls vs. the magnesium cased Palm devices, admitting the latter's bazaar advantage at the time, and the consistent customer depression resulted in abounding allotment and canceled contracts. The company's CEO was additionally CFO and boarded afterwards blank on disastrous, big-ticket business campaigns, such as planned Super Bowl ads afterwards basics like a ambition market. 90%+ of all sales were aural the Manhattan area, and the 3GL networks bare to aggrandize the account bootless to actualize afterwards the telecom bazaar accident in 2000–2001. The most-hyped affection of the account was a accessible bath rank-and-search service, accessible in Manhattan only, which accustomed users to rank bathrooms by several factors such as cleanliness, appointment, etc., and provided admonition to such bathrooms based on the user's location. The aggregation laid off about all workers in 2001, and abeyance formally anon afterwards. Its CEO was accounted to accept fled to Canada to abstain the IRS and lawsuits filed by a few annoyed advisers who were concluded with no severance admitting absolute accounting application contracts. The URL is now in use by another, different company.

Zap.com: an internet media adventure founded by Zapata Corporation, a angle protein aggregation absorbed on monetizing its area name.

Top 10 dot-com flops CNET.com

Notes and references

USA Today. December 28, 2000. http://www.usatoday.com/money/dotcoms/dot039.htm. Retrieved May 1, 2010.

^ Skillings, Jonathan. "Explaining the "dot-cons"". ZDNet.

^ http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-811729-details/From+dotcoms+to+dotgones../article.do

^ Glasner, Joanne (2001-08-31). "Dot's In A Name No More". Wired news. Retrieved 2005-12-27.

^ Helmore, Edward (2001-05-10). "So Who's Crying Over Spilt Milk?". London: The Guardian. Retrieved 2007-06-27.

^ "Game Mags Gone Because of MySpace Spam?". 2007-03-13. Retrieved 2007-06-27.

^ Top 10 dot-com flops - CNET.com

^ Company History | Network Solutions

^ NBCi agrees to access AllBusiness.com | CNET News.com

^ "Liberty Media Form 8-K". SEC.

^ "Shopbop Acquired". Business Wire. February 27, 2006.